The News and Observer from Raleigh, North Carolina • 69

INHAISUP11 Friday August 19 1994 a 51 MOVIES 1 IM CARRiEY 1HE MASK' IS THE BEST loomNOY 01 THE SWIM" Fox-rt "'THE MASK' IS THE SUPER HERO OF THE '90'S!" Heciy SON NIWS 14111011 'THE MASK' IS AMAZING!" Whatity ABC-80SION MASK' IS MAGNIFICENT!" Stoner PBS KICKS THE At 2- :41 ect (7" 4 'kAvs tkutot- 041 At 1 r-k FROM ZERO TO HERO NEW LINE CI CSMCMSCIV New Line Productions inc All Rights Roussel -zu61 Peter Cellier pursues Lalita Ahmed in 'Bhaji on the Beach' a film that doesn't preach while examining racism sexism and the generation gap ezn-lue ow Al Ordinary people extraordinary film 6 MN I i i i i REVIEW Bhaji on the Beach 12 Actors: Kim Vithana Shaheen Khan Santa Khjuria Director: Gurinder Chadha Theater: Raleigh: Studio Rating: Not rated I By ROBBIE ROBERTS STAFF WRITER "4- rt is a rare day when a movie delivers one or two fully drawn characters people so real that they step off the screen and live in the mind I -3 completely fierce that one can't help but admire her passion The joys in this movie are many The performances by a cast of professionals rarely seen in this country are magnificent individually and as an ensemble The location shooting is occasionally ragged in terms of focus and camera moves but cinematographer John Kenway has melded documentary and narrative in his lighting and Chadha has melded them in her staging as they make Blackpool an otherworldly place that allows for these characters' epiphanies A quiet scene between Oliver the young father-to-be played by Mo Sessay and his father is a joy played out at an electronics work table in the halting rhythms of everyday life A scene at a Blackpool cafe at teatime involving Hashida Pushpa and a counter woman is equally real this time rich with irony rather than iron devotion to doing the right thing Bhaji is an English derivation of bhajia an Indian snack similar to vegetable tempura "Bhaji on the Beach" is a derivation of the English social realism of Mike Leigh and Lindsay Anderson an examination of ordinary lives that feels as much documentary as drama Chadha's version of such storytelling is dense with ideas with contradictions with agendas and with good works It is intellectual anft intuitiirt atia tottiiiW1 a 41M10111 1100 Chadha and Syal use this day at the beach to introduce us to Hashida who has just found she is pregnant a condition surely to collide with her entrance into medical school and even more surely to divide her from her family because the father is a black man and she is an Indian woman to introduce us to Ginder who has taken her little boy and left her husband an action surely to bruise her soul by separating her from the security of her tradition-bound Asian community just as surely as it will allow her bruised body to heal to introduce us to Machu and Ladhu adolescent sisters sure that they will learn more about themselves from burger-boy hickeys than from a pregnant cousin or a bitter old auntie "Bhaji on the Beach" gives us both sides of the story though Not just the busload of women bound for the sea but the men chasing them there the teenage burger flippers the young man who loves Hashida and the young husband who doesn't know how to love Ginder Once removed from the dizzying problems of love if not men is Asha pursued through the streets of Blackpool by a middle-aged dandy of a thespian and by her own daydreams daydreams that help her sort out the violent clash of her modern English life and her time-warped Indian community Twice removed is Pasha an old womansofiercely racist that one can't ieemuch fur hen itiel is victimize by-g tki4r butt's 16 6 rell i i 4 it Wwc i -11 i The 1 II I III IItEGi PIVOTAL MOAK 1 1 1 V111? "rx 1PGi GUMMI avow RN IP The America sleep tight: safety of the free world is in his hands EllE 16'un1 for hours even days after the movie ends So this is how rare a treat "Bhail on the Beach" is: no fewer than 15 characters are nothing short of real Director Gurinder Chadha writer Meera Syal and a heavenly ensemble prove how rewarding character-based low-budget filmmaking remains in this day of computer-generated special effects blood baths and conflagrations larger and louder than even such a gawdy word should have a right to This movie finds the unexamined core at the center of racism the clash of culture and soul at the heart of sexism the bridges over the chasm between generations with hardly an ounce of preaching An14-5ian wPITACIfs grer4PI te45- day trip from BirmInghOr 1401 11 England4tw 014P'0OL SOGGES11 tro NULL PO mum knoIFulff I 01VIR IWO scrumr INOICSHOWING fef 74 Arni 5501 Atlantic ova wove GI 231 6477j I.